The first new album from Lilacs & Champagne in nearly a decade. Features members of Grails, Om, Holy Sons, Zombi, and NickeL Plated.
Nearly a decade after their last album, Lilacs and Champagne picks up right where that record, Midnight Features Vol. 2: Made Flesh, left off. With bizarre excursions into pillowy, sentimental made-for-TV music – and children's choirs incanting the blackest dread-filled music the band has conjured to date Fantasy World is both transcendent and traumatic.
Despite sharing two founding members of Grails (multi-instrumentalists Emil Amos and Alex Hall) Fantasy World only peripherally resembles their core group. Lilacs & Champagne have exaggerated their early record's implications and accelerated their mercurial rearranging of music history by deftly incorporating live instrumentation and samples with equal amounts of deference and disregard. Previously existing primarily in a realm adjacent to instrumental hip-hop (J Dilla, Clams Casino, Madlib), Fantasy World exposes Lilacs & Champagne's deeper lineage as playful tape-collage culture jammers in the vein of legendary sound satirists, Negativland and Severed Heads.
It embraces the effect of a child entering a dollar store: the immediate euphoria felt upon discovering the seemingly endless aisles piled impossibly high with novelty toys, utensils, party decorations, and toiletries eventually gives way to the overwhelming realization that they're actually just a tourist in a perilous mountain of colourful garbage. From those mountains, Lilacs & Champagne mold monuments to curiosity and confusion.
Nearly a decade after their last album, Lilacs and Champagne picks up right where that record, Midnight Features Vol. 2: Made Flesh, left off. With bizarre excursions into pillowy, sentimental made-for-TV music – and children's choirs incanting the blackest dread-filled music the band has conjured to date Fantasy World is both transcendent and traumatic.
Despite sharing two founding members of Grails (multi-instrumentalists Emil Amos and Alex Hall) Fantasy World only peripherally resembles their core group. Lilacs & Champagne have exaggerated their early record's implications and accelerated their mercurial rearranging of music history by deftly incorporating live instrumentation and samples with equal amounts of deference and disregard. Previously existing primarily in a realm adjacent to instrumental hip-hop (J Dilla, Clams Casino, Madlib), Fantasy World exposes Lilacs & Champagne's deeper lineage as playful tape-collage culture jammers in the vein of legendary sound satirists, Negativland and Severed Heads.
It embraces the effect of a child entering a dollar store: the immediate euphoria felt upon discovering the seemingly endless aisles piled impossibly high with novelty toys, utensils, party decorations, and toiletries eventually gives way to the overwhelming realization that they're actually just a tourist in a perilous mountain of colourful garbage. From those mountains, Lilacs & Champagne mold monuments to curiosity and confusion.
STAFF COMMENTS
Ashley says: There isn't an Emil Amos project I don't love. Grails, Holy Sons, Watter, Om, I love them all. Obviously I was over the moon that sleazy b-movie outlet Lilacs & Champagne are returning, and bring with them another glitzy mix of found-sound glitchy electronica and lounge-adjacent horror pop. It's as mad and brilliant as it sounds.TRACK LISTING
1. Ill Gotten Gains (2:49)
2. Rude Dream (3:13)
3. Fantasy Land (2:19)
4. Melissa (2:37)
5. Betraying Yourself (2:44)
6. Ready Rubbed Blue (2:03)
7. Evil Has No Boundaries (2:42)
8. No More Sherry (2:59)
9. Gentle Man (2:31)
10. Leprotic Phantasies (2:06)
11. 144 York Way (2:40)
12. Last Frontier (2:16)
13. Dr. Why (3:14)
14. Ordinary Man (4:08)